This is Rotating Quiz #270. Entries must be posted by Monday,
October 9th, 2017 at 11 PM (Eastern Daylight Time).
Usual rules: no looking anything up, no discussion, etc. The winner
gets to create the next RQ.
Please post your answers to all questions in a single followup in the
newsgroup, quoting the questions and placing your answer below each
one. Only one answer is allowed per question.
This quiz does not have a theme. Instead it has acrostics - the first
letters of each answer form a word and the last letters of each answer
form a different word. Each of the non-acrostic answers is worth 2
points, or 1 if it's almost right in some way. The acrostic answers
are worth 1 point each. If an answer is a person's name, the surname
is the part that is required for points and is used for the
acrostics. If any other part of the name is given it must be correct
for points to be awarded.
In case of a tie, the first tiebreaker will be whoever scored the most
points on the hardest questions (defined post-facto as the ones which
the fewest people got any points on). Second tiebreaker will be
posting order.
1. This city's name derives from the Arabic for "islands" for the four
islands which used to exist in its harbor. While nominally under
Ottoman rule for some time it acted independently and was a major
pirate base before the Barbary Wars. Not longer after those it fell
under colonial rule.
2. This was the first practical type of photograph, although it still
involved treating a silver-coated copper plate several times, once
with mercury vapor, so it unsurprisingly was mostly replaced by easier
methods within about twenty years. However, the name is often
incorrectly applied to other types of 19th-century photograph.
3. A string instrument played with a bow which was popular in Europe
from roughly the 13th to the 16th centuries. Its body was made from a
single piece of wood, unlike later string instruments such as
viols. These days it sees some use in folk music in regions such as
North Africa.
4. This country has only the second-highest capital in the world, but
(as one might expect) it is the closest capital to the equator, so
there's that. (The answer is the name of the country, not the
capital.)
5. This large coral atoll is self-governing but exists in free
association with New Zealand, which generally handles its foreign
affairs.
6. Many mines are accessed via vertical shafts, but in cases where the
material being extracted is above some local land level they are often
accessed via more or less horizontal tunnels ("more or less" because
they often slope a bit to drain water from the mine). Such a tunnel is
generally called what?
7. This Italian chemist gained fame as an author, in particular for
his memoir of his time in Auschwitz and his short story collection The
Periodic Table.
8. In painting this refers to a technique whereby the paint (usually
oil paint) is applied in very thick layers, giving texture to the
finished canvas.
9. Among the notable deaths of 2016 was that of the musician generally
known as Prince. What was his surname?
10. These pastries, called "<answer 10> cakes" after the English town
where they were first sold, are round, make of a flaky pastry, and
filled with currants. They are rounder than Banbury cakes and taller
than Chorley cakes.
11. The first letters spell what?
12. The last letters spell what?
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_______________________________________________________________________
Dan Blum
to...@panix.com
"I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't just made it up."